Ex-NYPD captain running for mayor slams AOC-backed defund police candidate whose block hired private security

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A former NYPD captain turned New York City mayoral candidate slammed his Squad-backed rival Maya Wiley for her comfortable neighborhood’s hiring of a private security guard as she pushes to defund the police.

"To me that’s the highest level of hypocrisy," Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said at a news conference Tuesday. "Security can’t be for the affluent — it must be for every New Yorker."

Wiley has called for slashing $1 billion from the NYPD’s budget even as police crime statistics show an increase in violent crime in numerous neighborhoods.

Shootings are up more than 74% year to date in 2021 compared to 2020, the statistics show. Hate crimes have soared more than 104%. Murders are up nearly 18%. Car thefts are up nearly 25%. And assaults are up 8%.

Eric Adams and Maya Wiley (Getty Images)

AOC ENDORSES PROGRESSIVE MAYA WILEY IN NEW YORK CITY MAYORAL CONTEST

The Democratic primary is on June 22, although early voting is already underway. There are eight major candidates battling it out to seize the nomination and become the Big Apple’s presumptive mayoral frontrunner.

Adams was leading the pack at 22% in a New York 1/Ipsos poll of likely primary voters Monday, ahead of former Democratic presidential hopeful and tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, who garnered 16%.

Wiley, a former counsel to outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio, last week received a major endorsement from the Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Yet she came in fifth in the poll at 9%.

She lives in a $2.7 million home in the low-crime Prospect Park South neighborhood in Brooklyn and said Sunday she opposed paying for private security, according to the New York Post, which has endorsed Adams for mayor.

Wiley’s husband, Harlan Mandel, was knocked out in a violent mugging in 2001 and decided to donate to the Prospect Park South Charitable Trust to help fund the private security guard.

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The incident, she told the Daily News last year, landed him in a hospital and out of work for more than a month. He became so traumatized that he walks in the middle of the street at night rather than down poorly lit sidewalks.

It was one of two muggings on their block over the past two decades, according to Wiley.

Wiley, an attorney and activist, has called for "alternatives to policing" and supports slashing the NYPD budget — or, as she puts it on her campaign website, bringing the budget "in line with our values and priorities."

She also wants to put a "freeze" on the incoming cadet classes of the NYPD and New York Department of Corrections and "[p]ermanently remove NYPD from mental health crisis management, traffic enforcement, and school safety."

Fox News’ Andrew Murray and Houston Keene contributed to this report.